Paris (AFP)

Almost a year after his appointment and after postponements due to Covid-19, Guillaume Gille will make his debut this week as coach of French handball players with a double confrontation against Serbia, in qualifying for Euro-2022 but also for prepare for the Mondial-2021 (January 13-31).

Tuesday afternoon (5:00 p.m.) in Zrenjanin in northern Serbia, the French will play their first match since the Euro-2020 fiasco last January, ended with elimination in the first round.

It will also be the first steps of Guillaume Gille in the role of coach, he who was appointed at the end of January 2020 to succeed Didier Dinart.

"The match, personally, it will remain my first with this new function, but I do not dwell on it. The important thing is that we move forward on our table, that the project is profile and that we are able to play well handball ", evacuates Guillaume Gille, former assistant of Dinart.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the meetings scheduled since Euro-2020 have all been postponed or adapted, the most recent in November (qualifying matches for Euro-2022 canceled but gathering of the group maintained in Créteil), forcing the staff and the French team to do part of the work remotely.

Now, French handball players are entering an extremely dense phase, with the ten-week sequence of qualifying for Euro-2022, the World Cup-2021 in Egypt (January 13-31) and the Olympic qualifying tournament in Montpellier (12 -14 March).

- Half-centers scrutinized -

The first step is therefore in Zrenjanin and concerns the qualifications for Euro-2022: to travel to Hungary and Slovakia in twelve months, the Blues must take one of the first two places in a group which, in addition to the Serbia, also contains Belgium and Greece.

Nothing insurmountable, knowing that a year ago, to prepare for Euro-2020, the French had outclassed Serbia in Metz (40-26) as part of the friendly tournament of the Golden League.

Then Michaël Guigou's teammates will continue on Saturday with a second match against Serbia, in Créteil and behind closed doors.

Even if Guillaume Gille's players are not yet "plugged in" to the 2021 World Cup, these two meetings should also help prepare for the deadline in Egypt, which will begin on January 14 for the French against Norway.

The center-half position will be particularly scrutinized, in the absence of the playing master Nikola Karabatic, victim of a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament of the right knee in early October and away from the field for many months.

Between the return "after a long crossing of the desert" of Kentin Mahé and two players "who continue to advance" -Nicolas Claire and Melvyn Richardson-, Gille has "different profiles", with "responsibilities that will have to be shared from the right way for everything to work ", underlines the coach.

© 2021 AFP